A child’s educational foundation begins at home — no matter what that house may look like. Socioeconomic class and racial identity do not determine how committed parents are to their child’s success, because families and dedicated school leaders come in all colors and tax brackets. But let’s be real: Being white and wealthy does open...

In a Nov. 4 commentary on LA School Report, Jeimee Estrada, the executive director of Educators for Excellence, presents a rational and compelling set of reasons why growth data should be the basis for measuring schools and students. Especially important is her focus on how the use of growth data better serves students on the...

“Why can’t we just teach kids to add numbers anymore? It seems like 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4 these days.” As an educator, I have encountered this conversation in parent-teacher conferences, with my chiropractor, and numerous times at parties and on airplanes, to name just a few occasions. People want to know why students...

After years of growth, the future of California’s charter sector is in doubt. With the passage of Assembly Bill 1505, which places numerous restrictions on the expansion and operation of charter schools in the Golden State, opponents of charters have claimed their biggest prize since the 2016 election when President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, replaced...

The release of the Nation’s Report Card last week was the exclamation point following a long line of 2018-19 state exam results that came out across the country in the last few months. There are three things I expect to hear every year around this time: ●  We don’t even need to see the results. You...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report The California Teachers Association recently named Joe Boyd as its new executive director, replacing Joe Nuñez, who was mysteriously ousted in July after six years on the job. Boyd was most recently the executive director of CTA’s counterpart, the California Federation of Teachers. The executive...

As educators scope out their work during the early ramp-up of the school year, one important item on their to-do list should be building connections with students’ families and learning about their lives outside of school. This isn’t just a sensible idea: Modularity Theory, a framework that explains how to optimize system performance, illustrates why...

Tuesday, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has the opportunity to give families and teachers a powerful tool to transform our kids’ education by publicly releasing growth data. They’ve already crunched the numbers. Fresno, Oakland and Long Beach school districts have released it publicly and California is one of only two states that doesn’t...

Los Angeles Unified leaders were right to abandon plans for a single rating system for schools, which would have been a giant step backwards for school performance transparency. Those same decision makers should double down by making Los Angeles school academic growth data available to schools and parents. The state of California has made significant...

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears weekly at LA School Report For the next three weeks, United Teachers Los Angeles will conduct a campaign targeted at its own members. The goal is to persuade them to approve a UTLA endorsement of Sen. Bernie Sanders for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president of the United States. Chapter...